Is your dream to be a professional poker player? (Not advice, I'm asking)

When I first started playing poker it was my dream to play professionally and make tons of money. Now my opinion has changed a bit. I'm studying law and will be graduating in a couple of years. Being a lawyer has been my dream already before I started playing poker and I don't want to totally waste my education. I have realized that being a professional poker player is not that easy. I know some pro players and not that many make 100k$+ in a year.

So, for now my plan is to play poker kind of as a serious hobby. I totally love the game and I want to get better at it because I like the competitiveness. I want to be able to buy something nice with poker money every now and then. I haven't totally ruled out a professional poker career though. I might just follow the money and do what ever pays the most

serious players and they want to get better at poker mostly to make it more fun and for side income.

Exactly! That´s exactly my goal. So to answer your question: No, I don´t wanna become a poker pro. Why? Because I already have a job which I really like. I´m self-employed as ghostwriter and I like it very much and already make a good earning with writing, in order to become a pro I would have to earn more than as ghostwriter which means I would have to move up to the high stakes. Further, I just don´t see myself grinding and studying poker all day, would be -like la55i says - a waste of my education I worked so hard for! And especially during downswings but not only then, I´m happy to have something besides poker, something which has nothing to do with poker.

Of course I wanna grind up - but probably only to the midstakes and make money with poker, but not only with poker.

For me it has always been a serious hobby. Poker as a hobby carries one little paradox. It doesnt cost any money if you do it well. Which is quite unique amongst all sorts of hobbies. Its costs a lot of time though and the activity is very routine like. You grind, you analyze, you sleep. That is not what I expect from life. I am employed in the marketing business and I cant complain. Sure it is an office job but it is also very creative, I meet a lot of people, I get to do a lot of different and exciting stuff. I wouldnt exchange it for grinding 8 hours a day. But I love poker and want to have it as a main hobby with the hope that maybe one day it could be a nice side income.

Not to mention that in the CZ poker is not very welcome and the future is very uncertain. Also you dont have any guarantees. As an employee I will always get my salary, if I am fired I will get a few salaries, if I cant find a job the state will take care of me to some extent. This would be not possible if I played poker only.

So to sum it up. I dont wish to be a poker pro. Although there used to be times in the past when I wished so.

Here in Croatia atm you actually can't think of being a poker pro because on-line poker is still a grey area (to be more precise, it's forbidden by the law to play at foreign sites, but still no one cares). So wouldn't be very convenient to do something as a main source of income and be forced to stop at some point and be penalised. Ofcourse, there are playeres that are doing it for a living. I think there are quite a few countries with the same situation.

I personally don't have dreams of becoming a poker pro. I have a good job with a stable income which I love to do and I dream about earning a good side income from poker playing midstakes. Ofcourse, I think many of us would like to earn couple of millions of dollars a year, travel around the world and live this glamurous lifestyle that some of the top players do, but the truth is that there are not many that can achieve that.

Reach my potential pretty much online
Then finally have time for more coaching (I'm still student first and coach second guys, the live coachings and replying in HHs to stay sharp in micros is all I do because I spend so much focus on learning) live poker, travelling, personal development, investments I already spend a lot of time on so I'll set for live

As the guys mentioned it's well possible I might just have to leave Czech Republic at some point, the regulation is already pretty restrictive now, but I don't care that much about where I live.

You know I talk about this with my girlfriend a lot, she doesn't get how moving up and crushing your personal limits by moving up the stakes is any signifficant - you still do the "same thing" and it's well possible that when I reach my peak there'll be no more competition and I'll move onto something else and start burning out but you know - that's now how you think on the way up and there's always things in life you can find fulfilling without having to build a career for 20 years, especially in 2018.

And I think that's the beauty of poker - the insane flexibility no other hobby really gives you

I've been a donk playing Zynga
I've been a hobbyist grinding NL2 with SSS
I've been a student that funded his studies with poker
I've quit a couple times for year+ altogether to focus on jobs
I used poker purely as a tool to come back to my home country and rekindle with my family, grind micros for a living without much ambition.
I used it as a tool for taking a year of personal development and poker as flexible means to and end..
And now it's my main goal with climbing to the top of my potential a priority.

You just never know what can happen, and you can focus on your day, your week, your month
Or even your year and take it one goal at a time.

There's people in the TOP5 NLHE online that got there recently that just discovered huge talent for the game within themselves after struggling at NL25-NL50 for months, one quit in first year of solid Swiss Uni, the other one gave up on very primising Professional sports career (I'm sure he'd overcome the injury he had at the time) both quit "real life stuff" around the small-midstakes level in 2016ish and both make millions now.

Honestly, when we get down to it, I don't think being a professional poker player is all it's cracked up to be. Spending hours a day grinding away at your computer, doing an activity that carries a heavy social stigma, provides zero social security benefits, offers little "real world" interactions with other people, and which puts your entire livelihood at the mercy of variance? All the while knowing that you would have nothing to show for years on your CV if you ever have to call it quits? While also being aware that your job contributes virtually nothing to help society? I think you'd have to make quite a lot of money playing poker to make this worthwhile, just being able to pay the bills wouldn't be enough.

As for me, I'm just very glad that - after years of breaking even at micro stakes - I finally found the right games for me which allow me to do consistent monthly withdrawals, even if it's just $100-200. Combined with the monthly financial compensation I will get for the community work I'm about to start next month, it's almost like having a poorly paying job already. Of course, I will still have to keep looking for a proper career (as opposed to mere jobs) in the long term, and I don't think it's very wise for pretty much anyone in the Western industrialized world these days to look at poker as a serious career option. Sure, it's possible, but there should be so many better, easier and less risky options for the vast majority of us.

For me, I think poker is mostly a way of "building something up" over time, something of my very own. So it's more than a hobby, but obviously not quite a job either. It's hard to describe, really. If I would ever reach a level where I could describe myself as "semi-pro", I believe this would be pretty much as good as it gets. Like I said, I don't think that aiming for anything higher would be very wise for people in my position.

That being said, I would be lying if I claimed that being a professional poker player was never something I dreamed about. But we all have to face reality, sooner or later.

For me, I think poker is mostly a way of "building something up" over time, something of my very own. So it's more than a hobby, but obviously not quite a job either. It's hard to describe, really.

Haha, same here and still haven´t found a word for it. I use to call myself an "ambitious recreational player".

In the Netherlands and a few years unemployed: then it is impossible to get a job.
So for me poker is actually the only way that I can earn money.
So my situation is different than the situation of the other players that do have paid work.

I like the challenges of the game.
Disadvantages are indeed that you are most of the day alone with your PC. And that you really have to schedule fysical activity.

I will continue to strive to be able to earn enough money with poker for my livelyhood.

Originally posted by Dandiiik
Poker as a hobby carries one little paradox. It doesnt cost any money if you do it well. Which is quite unique amongst all sorts of hobbies.

I love this quote

Being a professional poker player is definitely my dream, I live in Brazil and things here isn't great... mostl of graduated people that i know just have average jobs, my uncle has a graduation in civil engineer have a bad job (earning around $400/month) and can't find anything better.
I think i'm able to earn around 1.5k$~2k$/month playing poker at 7s! Sure there is variance but come on, every poker players knows about bankroll management even if you are a casual player, being pro not only means crushing current stake, it means you'll have to study and understand the variance behind your variant and so now, i'll just give you guys an example:

I can beat 7s Spins with EvRoi around 5.5%, I've done the math before using SwongSim and if i'm not wrong with 15k games played there's 5% chance of getting like 1.3k$ in thoses 15k (I can do around 5k/months if grinding 8h/weekdays) so in the worst case scenario i would get paid the same amount as my actual job (without counting the good 5% of the variance that could get paid something like 10k$ so managing your incomings to the worst case scenario will give you freedom that only poker can give u! that what i think about the "risky" job